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The Source of Evil 

 

By Ali Sina

One of my readers asked about duality of good and evil. My response is that life (nature) is neither good nor bad. Nature is neither cruel nor kind. Nature and natural laws are emotionless. Bad and good do not exist as absolute realities. They are relative to things and circumstances. Say for example, life is good to a little bird that finds abundance of worms and can feed her chicks but it is not good to the worms that become her snacks. What is good for one creature is bad for the other. Therefore nature is good or bad depending on which side you take. Good and bad are subjective.

As for us humans, the search for absolute good is futile. There is no such thing as absolute good. We have to concern ourselves with the good that benefits us and is relative to our own lives.

This does not mean that my good should be an evil to you. We humans are related to each other. We feel that relatedness instinctually. As a norm, the pain and suffering of other humans affect us. There are of course exceptions to this norm, but those are aberrations. When we come to this awareness of our oneness, we realize that our individual good is in the good of all mankind. My happiness cannot be gained through the suffering of other humans.

The dualism that you experience is circumstantial. Let me clarify this with an example. You have to sign a lucrative business contract in another city; however, on the way to the airport you have an accident and not only lose your flight and your deal you are also taken to hospital for broken ribs. This sounds to be a disaster and certainly a bad thing. Next morning as you watch the news from your bed in the hospital, you are shocked to see that the plane that you intended to take has crashed killing everyone on board. Now, was your accident a fortunate thing or was it a bad thing?

Good and bad are circumstantial. Nature follows its own course unaware of you and me and what we perceive to be good or bad.

It is up to us to use the laws of the nature to our advantage and benefit from them.

Knowledge, certainly leads us to what is good and evil is the result of ignorance.  The knowledge of physical laws of the nature will give us the tool to harness its forces. But the knowledge of the spiritual laws of the nature or what we can define as awareness, will let us use those forces to our advantage.

Ignorance is the mother of all sins. Through knowledge and awareness we can use the natural laws and benefit from them.

We all know what are the physical laws and how to gain the knowledge of them. But, where and how should we gain awareness? Awareness can be gained by understanding the interrelatedness of life. Not only we humans are related to each other, we are also related to the animals and the entire universe. We cannot achieve happiness on individual level if our interrelatedness is violated. The health of one cell of your body depends on the health of your entire body, i.e. the health of all your cells. If one cell keep growing by devouring other cells, it becomes cancerous and the life of the entire body will be endangered. The awareness that we are related like cells of one body leads us to good and the ignorance of that to evil. One part of mankind cannot be happy when the other part suffers.

Today someone sent me an article written by a certain Jack Engelhard. I shivered as if touched by devil himself when I read this man’s hateful write up. What he wrote is sheer evil. This man was offended when President Bush in his speech on the event of the capture of Saddam Hussein said. "May God bless the people of Iraq, and may God bless America." 

Engelhard wrote:

“During the opening ceremonies of any Olympic Games, we do not tip our flag to any other nation, or to the world, and in general, we may wish other nations well, but we do not wish God to bless them. This is unique to us, unique to our pride, unique to our patriotism, or so it was until only hours ago, when, hearing Bush say "God bless the people of Iraq," I gulped and felt unease. I was offended that some other nation...any other nation...was given that loving embrace …Frankly, I was jealous that some other nation was given a share of my American blessing.”

What this man represents is evil. There is no difference between him and the terrorists that he denounces. He is a Jew. But it makes little difference whether you are a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim or a communist. If you are filled with hate, if you can't love your fellow human being, if you are unaware of the oneness of mankind, you are an instrument of evil, a cancerous cell that is endangering not only the happiness, but the life of mankind. 

The key to our happiness and good is in the awareness of our oneness. There are however obstacles that impede us to be one. These obstacles are ideologies and especially religions. Religions today are the main source of disunity and hate. They are the obstacles to the unity of mankind and hence they are evil. Jack Engelhard is a Jew and hence he is offended if the president of USA blesses the people of Iraq who are Muslims. If he were not a Jew and if the Iraqis were not Muslims, if they were all humans and nothing else but humans, would he as a human be so offended if other humans were blessed? No! It is ideology and especially religion that can generate this much hate and cause this much evil. What is more shocking is the fact that as a Jew he should have known better. It was exactly the sentiments such as this that lead Hitler to bring about the holocaust. And now Mr. Engelhard embodies the same Hitlerian spirit, the same hate, the same bigotry, the same xenophobia and the same arrogant nationalistic pride.   

Jews are again concerned of the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Are somehow people like Engelhard responsible for that? The good Jews must nip in the bud such racist remakes made by a few hate mongering Jews. People like Engelhard will only alienate the rest of the world from the Jews. They provide the excuse that the anti-Semite bigots need to promote their own hate agenda. To stop the rise of anti-Semitism some leadership must be shown by the Jews themselves. Jewish doctors traveled to Kosovo to help the Muslim refugees. That is the kind of leadership the world needs. People like Engelhard must be reprimanded and disowned by the Jews.  Jews know better than anyone else what hate means and they must be the first to stop its spread. 

Some religions such as Islam explicitly and unabashedly teach hate, killing and violence. Others, pay lip service to love and unity but in effect divide the children of man into us vs. them. It is foolish to assume that religions will bring us together. They will only divide us. They will only cause hate. They will only do evil. Religions are instruments of Satan. If Satan was real, he would have no better way to divide mankind, instill hate in their hearts and make them kill one another better than religion.    

 

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